Thursday morning we were up at 5:45am. It was raining lightly and had snowed a little in Anchorage.

We arrived at the rail yard by 7:30am. Dressed in our uniforms, complete with name tags and black tie. Overnight bags packed. Ready to depart on the fam (familiarization) trip.

We clocked in and went to our assigned cars to prepare for the day. I was fortunate to be in the last car, the caboose! Complete with the outdoor viewing platform on the back.

This time we had time constraints that were real. We did have more than one bartender per car for this final training run.

The cars have the bar in different locations. My car for the day had the bar in the back of the car. I liked this location, though it was at the top of one of the two sets of stairs, so for a while it was chaos. Three of us stocking the bar while having to move to allow people to pass through the narrow aisle.

Finally, with the bar stocked, it was time to leave the station! We needed to move forward to the depot to pick up the remaining passengers.

Soon, we were leaving the depot for our next destination. Talkeetna. Here our current passengers would disembark. We would gain new passengers who were traveling the trip to Denali.

Right away, we spotted two Moose. Soon we were seeing the largest gathering of eagles I’d ever seen. All while viewing the stunning nature of Alaska.

The sun came out and it was pretty clear along the tracks. God had blessed us with a gorgeous day.

There were rivers filled with ice chunks. Some waters with hints of turquoise blue, made possible by glacial flour. The magical ingredient to the beautiful hues of the glacially fed waters. Small ponds and homesteads. And the forests, of course.

At one point, a server came upstairs to take a look. She was a local and said to me, “Oh. There’s a porcupine!” I thought she couldn’t see an animal that small. But she was right. It was in a tree with all the quills puffed out. Right after that she said, “And there’s a moose’s rib cage. In the road.” And indeed. There was.

Since we left the station at 8:30am and got to Denali around 6:30pm, it was a long day. So please enjoy these pictures and I’ll be back tomorrow with more stories and pictures!